Category Archives: Walking

My sort of rucking

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Waffles the Pug, the king of the casita couch.

I’m babysitting my grand dog as my daughter is off to Paris and a destination wedding for a bestie in Portugal. (What’s up with all these destination weddings? A topic for another day.) She flew from SF to Phoenix to drop off the pup. Plus, we got to spend two days together.

I was looking forward to walking Waffles around the neighborhood. I miss walking a dog. But as life would have it, my daughter called me a few weeks ago and said Waffles was limping She waited to see if it would go away, but when it didn’t, the vet diagnosed Waff with a soft tissue shoulder injury. He’s taking meds for inflammation and his activity is curtailed.

FYI, my daughter has a soft tissue shoulder injury due to her career as a distance swimmer in college. My husband has the same issue with his shoulders from his school years playing football and wrestling. My daughter said she’s convinced with our family history, Waffles injury is genetic.

How I worked around Waffles shoulder injury.

I ordered a cheap pet stroller from Amazon! I’m now pushing 20 pounds of Waffles and a few pounds of stroller for two or three miles a day. I’m feeling it in my forearms, triceps and butt. It’s my sort of rucking.

If my husband was embarrassed about being seen by neighbors with his rucksack that I wrote about HERE, you should have seen his face when I unveiled the stroller with Waffles inside! We are walking separately FYI.

To be fair, hubby is walking at 5:30 a.m. and I’m going at 7 a.m. because Waffles wakes me up at midnight and 4 a.m. to go outside. I’m trading Waffles nights with hubby from now on.

Waffles seems to like it and he sits quietly taking in the sights. I let him out in the park so he can sniff, mark trees and do the rest of his business. He can spend 20 minutes with his nose buried in the grass sniffing dogs, bunnies and birds who were there before.

After Waffles leaves, do I continue with my rucking and put weights in the stroller, or will the neighbor think I’m nuts?

How do you think Olive the cat will react if I take her in the stroller for a walk?

Or, will the Waffles smells end any chance?

What do you think makes waking with dogs more enjoyable than walking alone?

Early birds

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Bird Buddy updated their app with a new feature. On live streaming on my phone, I can now snap photos. That’s how I got the photo above. Before, the app took photos on its own and for some reason, the Cardinal wasn’t getting many photos. I mostly got Mourning Doves and a Curved Bill Thrasher. My Cardinal couple probably flit away too quickly to get their pics taken. Now, when I spot them at the feeder, I can take their pictures. FYI, that’s a sunflower seed stuck to the bird’s beak or he’s in the process of chomping it down.

Enough with birds. This post was meant to be about changing my schedule back to being an early bird. It hit 90 degrees last week, which meant after I woke up between 6 and 7 a.m., wrote my morning pages, Bible readings, shower, etc. it was too warm outside. Although I still walked, I needed to make a change. The answer was to flip the script, get out of bed earlier and straight to walking. The rest of my morning routine could wait until after our walk.

The temperatures dropped to a low of 50, high of 70 degrees, but I decided to stick with the new schedule. I found it hard enough to get out of bed an hour earlier for a few days until I got used to it. Now that I’m used to it, I’ll stick with it throughout the summer.

My husband decided to make our morning walk more challenging by rucking. What is rucking you ask?

Rucking is the action of walking with weight on your back. Walking with a weighted rucksack (aka backpack) is a low impact exercise based on military training workouts.

Hiking is rucking in the mountains and urban hiking is simply called rucking. You’ve probably even spent time rucking – traveling, bringing books to school, or on your commute to work. Carrying weight is a necessary part of life, and as it turns out, humans are naturally good at it, too.

ACTIVE RESISTANCE TRAINING™

Rucking builds muscle and strength while improving cardio and endurance. Bringing both types of exercises together provides a fuller range of benefits to improve your health. You can burn up to 3x more calories than walking.

https://www.goruck.com/pages/what-is-rucking

I don’t know why, but he’s embarrassed about his new rucking hobby. I think it’s too cute. Rucking is a popular thing now, not quite like pickleball, but more and more people are doing it. But hubby is motivated to get out the door early to avoid any neighbors seeing him with a rucksack on his back. Today, we saw ran into someone when we were less than a block from home.

“Five minutes earlier and we would have made it,” he said.

How does your schedule change with the seasons?

Have you heard of rucking before and do you think you’ll try it?

What’s on my mind?

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View from the corner of our street, looking back at our house.

Here are four random things racing around my brain:

Mail Mix Up

A package arrived and it was in a locker at the community mailboxes. When we get packages, the mailman puts a key in our mailbox to a large locker. My key was for locker #3, but I noticed that locker already had a key in it. The locker was empty.

The key stuck in locker #3 was for a different locker.

I pulled out the key and discovered the lock was broken. Whoever used the wrong key to open up locker #3 forced it open and took my package! I used their key to open up the correct locker and there was a package inside that wasn’t mine. I took a picture of the name and address on that package and once home called their number in our directory.

He said, yes he had my package and wanted to know where his was. I told him it was in locker #4. I found it odd that he jammed open the wrong locker, took my package by mistake, but never bothered to return it, until I called.

CLEAR

In California, there is a proposal to ban CLEAR, a service that I use.

A new bill, the first of its kind in the U.S., would ban security screening company Clear from operating at California airports as lawmakers take aim at companies that let consumers pay to pass through security ahead of other travelers. 

Sen. Josh Newman, a California Democrat and the sponsor of the legislation, said Clear effectively lets wealthier people skip in front of passengers who have been waiting to be screened by Transportation Security Administration agents.  CBS News

I signed up for CLEAR a couple years ago after a visit with Mom in Seattle. At SeaTac airport, which has huge security lines, I was approached by a CLEAR salesperson. He asked if I wanted to try out the service. I agreed and I had my eyes scanned and was fingerprinted. I was able to register four people, which worked out perfectly for our family of four—pre son’s marriage to Buff. I was walked up to the front of the security line to wait to put my stuff in bins and walk into the machine with my arms raised above my head. I thought, this is pretty cool. By the time I got home, I got an email from LifeLock that CLEAR had accessed a background check on me. The cost was $189 for four people for one year. I think someone who flies all the time for work would find it worthwhile.

Reggie got his trophy back

LOS ANGELES — After nearly 14 years apart, Reggie Bush is reunited with his Heisman Trophy, ending a nearly two-decade saga that became a touchpoint for public opinion about how college athletes should benefit from their stardom.

The Heisman Trust reinstated Bush’s 2005 Heisman Trophy on Wednesday in a seismic moment for a player who was the face of a golden era for USC football. The career of Bush, who forfeited his Heisman in 2010 after the NCAA deemed he received impermissible benefits, forced fans — and now the sport’s long-established institutions — to reckon with whether NCAA penalties could actually taint a player’s on-field legacy.

“We are thrilled to welcome Reggie Bush back to the Heisman family in recognition of his collegiate accomplishments,” said Michael Comerford, President of The Heisman Trophy Trust. “We considered the enormous changes in college athletics over the last several years in deciding that now is the right time to reinstate the Trophy for Reggie. We are so happy to welcome him back.” The Athletic

This makes me happy, because I was a Reggie fan and I don’t think he should have lost the Heisman in the first place. With NIL rules changed, I think it’s time Reggie is a Heisman awardee again.

What I saw walking

In the development next to ours, the homes are huge, 5,000 to 7,500 square feet, but they are so close to together. I don’t get it.

Then I saw this:

If you couldn’t get the mail locker open, would you stop and check the tag on the key to see if you were at the correct locker?

Do you think it’s okay to pay for a service to jump ahead in line? How about paying Southwest a fee to board at the front of the line?

Any thoughts on Reggie Bush?

Walking along Frank Sinatra

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We took a morning walk down a street called Frank Sinatra this weekend while we were in the Palm Springs area. This is the view from Palm Desert of Mt. San Jacinto. The mountain is a few blocks from the backyard of our old home. Many of the streets are named after celebrities including Bob Hope, Gerald Ford, Dinah Shore, Gene Autry and Fred Waring. My kids didn’t know that Fred Waring was a person. But they heard of Dinah Shore when Leonardo DiCaprio moved into Dinah Shore’s old house — next door to one of their school mates.

Frank Sinatra’s compound is on Frank Sinatra Drive, which might be the reason for the street’s name. I once interviewed to be Sinatra’s assistant’s assistant and entered his property for an interview. One of my ballet friends had the job and she was asked to refer people for the position because she was moving to LA. It turned out the job paid about 25% less than what I was making in PR for a local developer, so working with the Sinatras was not enough of a pull for me to change jobs.

We had a busy weekend with my dad’s 92nd birthday, visiting clients and attending a friend’s funeral. That’s why we drove about five hours Saturday and five hours on Sunday.

View of Desert Willow golf course from a sidewalk along Frank Sinatra.

Mt. San Jacinto Palm Springs
The view of Mt. San Jacinto from my morning walks when I lived in Palm Springs.
This was a park a few blocks from our house.

What did you do this past weekend that you enjoyed?

The bite

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Waffles, my daughter's pug, at the Utes pool.
Waffles, my daughter’s pug, made it on “We Rate Dogs” a popular “pupper” site on Twitter and Instagram. Waffles got 13 out of perfect 10 rating — and more than 75k likes for this photo taken by someone on my daughter’s college team.

The photo above is Waffles the pug. No he doesn’t bite. His snaggle teeth weren’t built to do that. This is a story about another dog from a morning walk last week.

We headed out the door around 5ish a.m. The sun rises after 5:30, but the sky glows pink and gray, waiting for the intense sun to peak over the horizon.

At this early time, we see a few dog walkers in the neighborhood. One is a petite blond lady with a pit bull named Star. We’ve known Star since she was a puppy about a year and a half ago. She’d lay down submissively so we’d come over to her for a pat. Often, she’d roll on her back so she’d get a belly rub from my husband.

I’m not a pit bull fan. As Star grew older, the owner kept to her side of the street. Often Star would lunge, growl and snarl at us. The owner apologized and didn’t know what to make of the new attitude.

I said, “Maybe Star is getting older and more protective?”

Sometimes, she’d say, “Star wants to come say hi.” She’d walk Star over to us with different results. Sometimes Star was good. Other times she’d start sweet and then snap.

From then on (several months ago) we gave up on communicating with Star.

Last week, we spotted the woman across the street. Star laid down. The owner said something to us from across the street. My husband couldn’t hear what she said. I kept walking away from Star at a brisk pace.

My husband walked towards Star and the woman, but stopped six to eight feet away to not invade Star’s space. Star was on a thick leather leash, held by the woman.

The woman was chit chatting about how hot it was and how we have to get out early to walk.

Then Star, without warning or provocation, lunged, snarling from the ground at my husband and bit his hand. The woman didn’t have the strength to pull Star back.

Fortunately, my husband jumped away with only a puncture wound. When he caught up to me his hand was dripping blood. “If I didn’t move away, I would have lost my hand,” he said. “What was really strange is she didn’t say anything to the dog. Not bad dog! or anything!”

I reported the dog bite to the HOA board but didn’t hear back immediately. I wanted to let other families in our neighborhood be aware.

We looked up dog bites on our County website and my husband decided to file a complaint. He had a picture of his hand, the dog bite broke through skin, which were requirements. We don’t want to get the neighbor upset, but we worry about what could happen. Especially because most the people in our neighborhood are older. They might not get away as quickly — or even worse get knocked down.

The dog will be under house arrest for 10 days and tested for rabies. Other than that, I don’t think anything will happen to Star. We may have made an enemy in Star’s owner, but hopefully saved other people. Since reporting, we have heard that someone two houses away from the pit bull was bitten, too.

What would you have done in our place? Would you report the dog and/or ask the HOA board for restriction of some kind? How do you think the owner should corrected Star?

Too old to sprint?

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A view before sunrise during my morning walk.

Did you know?

“Exercise Before Surgery Slashes Post-op Complications”

That’s a headline I found for an article written by Lynn Allison. I’m having eye surgery tomorrow. Then in September some minor outpatient surgery. So the article caught my eye.

Researchers from the University of Otago in New Zealand say that intense exercise before surgery reduces the risk of postoperative complications as well as hospital stays by as much as 56%, says Study Finds.

“We have found that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is safe and effective for surgical patients,” says lead investigator Kari Clifford, of the Department of Surgical Sciences at the University of Otago. “A HIIT program can meaningfully improve a patient’s fitness within four to six weeks, and this reduces postoperative complications and length of stay.”

The work analyzed 12 studies including 832 patients who engaged in HIIT before their surgeries. The training involved repeated aerobic interval exercises at about 80% of their maximum heart rate before going into active recovery.

The most significant result was the change in cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) — a measure of how well the body takes in oxygen and delivers it to the muscles and organs during prolonged periods of exercise. The significant improvement in CRF lowers the risk of adverse postoperative events, says Clifford, in a university press release.

https://www.newsmax.com/health/health-news/hiit-high-intensity-interval-training-surgery/2023/07/21/id/1128061/

If high-intensity interval training is good for post op recovery, that must transfer to everyday life. I reflected on my own workout routines. I realized that my slow and steady walks and swims are not getting the job done.

When I swam with my Master’s coach, he’d change up the pace. He’d have me swim 75s or 100s alternating “fast and slow.” Like swim 25 easy, 25 sprint, 25 slow for a 75 four times through. I was changing my heart rate. Without a coach, I leisurely swim laps not changing pace, because I’m proud to show up. Period. There’s nobody to push me. Not even my husband. I watch him sprint during his last two hundred yards and worry that he’ll have a heart attack.

We have an assault fitness bike gathering dust. Yesterday I got on it and sprinted for 20 seconds followed by 30 seconds easy a few times. Yes, it got my heart rate going. It’s something I’ll repeat each day and build on. When I swim laps, I’m going to throw in some interval training and sprint a few 25s. It can’t hurt.

What are your thoughts about high-intensity interval training? Is it something you incorporate in your workouts? Do you think you can be too old for HIIT?

Please check out my new blog schedule with posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Early mornings

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View from before sunrise during a morning walk. I love the pastel pink and blue skies.

The summer heat is here. Today it’s supposed to be 108 degrees. We’re at an elevation of 3,000 feet — rather than near sea level at our old home in Palm Springs. That makes it seven to 10 degrees cooler here.

But after our freezing cold wet winter, my body hasn’t adjusted to hot temperatures — even though the days are under 110 degrees. When I lived the Coachella Valley for 38 years, I would say it’s not hot until it’s over 110. Now, in Arizona, after two and half years, my tolerance is 100 degrees.

Our solution? Waking up early. Alarm is set for 4:30 a.m. We’re out the door by 5 a.m with a temperature of 78 degrees. Sunrise is almost half an hour later. Our goal is a one-hour walk through our neighborhood for three miles. We’ve upped our mileage and time from a 40-minute two-mile walk. We don’t see many people out, except for an occasional neighbor walking their dog.

I am getting somewhat adjusted to the new schedule. I’m very tired in the afternoon and I want to nap. But I’m not a napper. Also, I’m afraid if I do nap, I won’t be able to fall asleep at my new bedtime!

A benefit of the new schedule is I’m finding lots of time to read. I’m done with my reading and writing blogs and rewriting my manuscript hours earlier in the day. Plenty of time to settle on the sofa with a book. I’m also getting pesky chores done that I’ve managed to put off for months — or should I say years?

Here’s a photo of sunrise around 5:25 a.m.

What are your summer temperatures like?

What do you consider a perfect temperature or too hot?

What adjustments do you make to your summer schedule, if any?